The ceasefire between India and Pakistan arrived at on Saturday ended three days of the worst fighting seen between the two sides in decades, but the United States publicly claiming credit is a disaster for Indian foreign policy, says defence expert Sushant Singh.
The Indian military on May 7 said it launched strikes on terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan following the terror attack on tourists in Pahalgam in April. This was followed by three days of cross-border shelling that escalated to drone attacks on border towns and missile attacks.
On Saturday evening, Donald Trump claimed that the US had helped mediate the ceasefire, but India later said that Pakistan’s director general of military operations called up first asking to pause the hostilities.
In an interview with Scroll on Sunday, Singh said that whether it was Kargil or other instances where US presidents officials have intervened, they had always been in the background. “Now, this is completely in the forefront,” said Singh, a lecturer at Yale University and a consulting editor at The Caravan.
“This also negates India’s long-standing view that any crisis or issue with Pakistan is a bilateral issue and should not be internationalised,” said Singh.
For Pakistan, the entire episode has been a huge victory: first, Trump talked of India and Pakistan together, hyphenating them, contrary to India’s emphatic opposition to being clubbed with its hostile neighbour for the past 20 years. Second, Trump succumbed to Pakistan’s nuclear threat and third, Kashmir has been made an issue of global concern.
“These are the three things which the Indian government – not just Modi’s but governments preceding him going up to Indira Gandhi, Shastri, Nehru – has always opposed,” said Singh. “It’s a major setback for India’s foreign policy going back many many decades. This is exactly what Pakistan wanted.”
Edited excerpts:
The most striking thing was that it was Donald Trump who announced the ceasefire on Saturday, not India or Pakistan. The US is selling this as a US-brokered ceasefire. What does this mean for India’s foreign policy and India’s strategic objectives?
It is pretty embarrassing for Modi to be preempted by Trump and to be shown up as somebody who has compromised under pressure from Trump. Modi, over the last 10-11 years, has tried to project himself as a big global leader who is not bullied by anyone, who doesn’t listen to anyone and everybody in the world seeks his advice. But in this case, it is pretty clear that he and his government could not sustain the pressure that came from President Trump and succumbed to it.
This also negates India’s long-standing view that any crisis or issue with Pakistan is a bilateral issue and should not be internationalised. Over a period of time – whether it is Kargil or else where many US presidents, US officials have intervened – those have always been in the background. Now, this is completely in the forefront.
It has put Modi in some kind of an embarrassing position. But knowing the kind of control he has over India’s corporate-owned mass media, we should expect that they will try and spin it and get a narrative where this will also be posited as a victory and the role of Trump, the vice president and the secretary of state would be marginalised.
Could you expand on what is the reportage of the US role?
The reportage of the US role mainly comes from CNN and a bit from New York Times, and is more or less in agreement with each other. The reportage is that by Friday afternoon, US time, it was pretty clear to the Trump administration, particularly to Marco Rubio, that things were escalating at a pretty fast pace and were likely to go out of hand.
It is at that point he approached Vance and Trump that they should press on both capitals and all the decision makers to step back. What exactly was the intelligence? Did it relate to Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities or something else?
We don’t know yet. But it was decided that vice president JD Vance – whose wife Usha is of Indian origin; her parents were Indian immigrants – would call up Modi and tell him that things can go completely out of hand and he should step back and start talking to the Pakistanis. Similarly, Marco Rubio spoke to Asim Munir, Shehbaz Sharif and others on the Pakistani side. Meanwhile, [India’s National Security Advisor Ajit] Doval, [External Affairs Minister S] Jaishankar and the others were spoken to on the Indian side as well.
Eventually it was pressed upon India and Pakistan that they should talk to each other and that is how the two DGMOs [director generals of military operations] spoke to each other and some kind of agreement or arrangement or understanding was arrived at about the ceasefire.
The US has always been involved in mediation, but this is public like never before. Trump put it out on TruthSocial and then later tweeted out an offer for mediation to find a “solution” to the Kashmir crisis. India has always gone against the idea that Kashmir is an international issue. Does this blow the lid on a lot of success that India had over the last couple of decades?
The whole idea of Kashmir being a bilateral issue emerges out of the Shimla agreement of 1972. In 1965, India came under tremendous pressure from the Soviet Union when Lal Bahadur Shastri had to go to Tashkent for a ceasefire and a peace agreement with Pakistan with [General] Ayub Khan. Before leaving Delhi, Shastri had announced that he would not give up Haji Peer pass at any cost. Haji Peer pass is a militarily important pass on what was then the ceasefire line and what is now the Line of Control.
But eventually, under Soviet pressure, he had to give up the Haji Peer pass to Pakistan. Unfortunately, Shastri had a massive heart attack in Tashkent and passed away there. Similarly, after India lost the 1962 border war to China, [US president] John F Kennedy put a lot of pressure because [at] that time the Indian armed forces were being built up by the United States.
[India’s foreign minister] Swaran Singh and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto held talks over Kashmir; Bhutto acted haughtily against Swaran Singh because he believed that Pakistan had the upper hand and India would roll over after it lost to China. Those talks failed and India didn’t concede anything.
All through this period in the ’50s and ’60s, India came under tremendous pressure from the West and from its friends in both in the UK as well as the Soviet Union about Kashmir.
That’s why, when India defeated Pakistan militarily in 1971, Indira Gandhi was clear that this has to be made bilateral. And this emerges out of the 1972 Shimla accord that the Kashmir issue, or any issue between India and Pakistan, is a bilateral issue and we are not going to go for any kind of international mediation.
But in 1999, President Bill Clinton intervened [during the Kargil war]. Nawaz Sharif was in the White House on July 4 but [former prime minister AB] Vajpayee did not go to the White House, and whatever Clinton told Vajpayee did not come out in public. The same thing happened in 2008, or 2016 or 2001 or 2019 [but] nothing became public in this blatant manner.
Trump’s update on Truth Social is not only just [about] Kashmir. There are three parts to it.
The first is simply that he is again hyphenating India and Pakistan – he’s talking about both India and Pakistan being great nations. In the last 20 years, India has always said, “Pitch us against China, dehyphenate India and Pakistan.” India has said, “We should not be clubbed with Pakistan.” [Now] This clearly means that India and Pakistan are again hyphenated when Trump talks about those two countries.
The second thing is, Trump also spoke about millions of lives being lost if things had gotten out of hand. That’s a euphemism for nuclear war. In the case of India and Pakistan in South Asia, the only country which threatens to pre-emptively use nuclear weapons is Pakistan. Essentially, Trump has succumbed to the Pakistani nuclear threat, or an implicit nuclear threat that comes from Pakistan.
The third thing is internationalising the Kashmir issue, which is what Pakistan has wanted for a long time. These are the three things which Pakistan, the Pakistani army and the Pakistani establishment wanted. These are the three things which the Indian government, not just Modi’s but governments preceding him going up to Indira Gandhi, Shastri, Nehru have always opposed. It’s a major setback for India’s foreign policy going back many, many decades. This is exactly exactly what Pakistan wanted.
I don’t know how serious Trump is and what kind of capacity or power he has to implement this or to push India into accepting this [ceasefire]. But on the face of it, what is out in the public doesn’t look good for Modi, particularly because he is seen as a master of this kind of public diplomacy and PR and what is put out in the public: pictures of [him] hugging global leaders or backslapping them, reels or clips which show great familiarity with various top leaders.
Do you think that we need to now go back to what was the UPA [Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government] style? It was often attacked, but did it actually have more impact? Did it contain Pakistan better than what we are doing now?
It’s not exactly true that this is the first time India and Pakistan have fought a war under the nuclear overhang. Pakistan had developed its nuclear weapons in the 1980s and even done formal testing in 1998.
The Kargil war, which was a pretty big war – more than 1,000 people died on both sides – was fought under the nuclear overhang. Both India and Pakistan were declared nuclear powers at that point in time.
Even in 2001, when Vajpayee mobilised the armed forces after the attack on Parliament and the Kaluchak attack [in Jammu in May 2002 that killed 23 people] – although military operations were not launched – also happened under the threat of the nuclear umbrella.
In that sense, has Modi overturned a long-standing policy? No.
What the UPA did was different and I genuinely believe that what [former national security advisor] Shiv Shankar Menon wrote in his book [Choices] makes a lot of sense: that you took the huge advantage of not going kinetic against Pakistan.
You became the darling of the West. The United States started giving you the kind of support which had historically not been available to India – in terms of technology, intelligence sharing, diplomatic support. India’s geopolitical rise is linked to India’s great restraint. Pakistan became a pariah nation across the world whereas India was seen as a mature country which takes responsible decisions.
It worked out very well for India, even economically with respect to China. And India got that opportunity to grow faster. This is the period when growth had just been going on for four-five years. That economic growth continued under the UPA government because it did not have to divert its energies towards a military conflict.
Let’s also not forget – and this is Shiv Shankar Menon again quoted in [journalist] Rajdeep’s book which came out after the 2019 election – that the military chiefs in 2008 did not give any options on the table. Nobody came up and said, let’s do this. So, it was not that India had many military options, but I think the UPA government [and the late] Dr Manmohan Singh made the best use of circumstances.
Somebody who served in the [US president Barack] Obama administration at that time in the White House, at a very senior position, told me that the orders from President Obama to him were to give everything that the Indians wanted but make sure there was no war between India and Pakistan. India took huge advantage of the policy that it followed.
When we come to Modi: in 2015 and 2016, after Pathankot, he tried to actually even involve ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] in an investigation in an Indian air base. It is not that he did not try to go down that path, but clearly those motives, that methodology did not work out. Then, in 2016, we had these very small special forces operations across the Line of Control, which were hyped up as a surgical strike before the Uttar Pradesh elections.
Then you have Balakot in 2019 where a military failure became a major political success. Post-2019, India has boxed itself into limited options. Rather than increasing the options it has as part of statecraft – diplomatic options, economic options, people-to-people contacts, in case of India water sharing, energy, other kinds of pacts – you have taken all of them off the table and boxed yourself into only a punitive military option.
Even in that punitive option, you have to do something more than what you have already done: what you have done in 2016 you have to do more in 2019; what you have done in 2019 you have to do much more in 2025.
Any statesman, any leader has to increase the options that are available to them and use both – a carrot and stick at the same time – to reward the adversary. If Pakistan does something right, you reward him, you give him the carrot. If he does something wrong, you use this stick.
Do you think it will be wise for India, at least in some small ways, to start talking to Pakistan again?
Definitely – if India’s strategic threat and challenge is coming from China and Pakistan is not the strategic challenge. No country can fight two fronts at the same time. The biggest and the most powerful countries in the world have not been able to take on two fronts. India cannot afford to fight on two fronts.
You can’t talk to China because China is a strategic threat. It’s a huge challenge. It wants a unipolar Asia. You will have to contest China in any case. The only country with which you can clearly have peace among these two adversaries is Pakistan.
If you were to manage and engage with Pakistan, you don’t box yourself in this manner. I’m saying this as a realist: you need to engage with Pakistan so that you take one of the adversaries off the table.
There has been a lot of chatter specifically around the jets. We’ve read reports in which Pakistan claims that it used Chinese jets.
Pakistan has Chinese jets – J10, JF17, that is well-known. What the Pakistanis are claiming, and which has not been reported in the Indian media – and whenever it has tried to be reported has been pulled down, whether it was the case of The Wire where their whole portal was taken down or The Hindu where [journalist] Vijaita’s [Singh] story had to be pulled down – is that using Chinese weaponry and Chinese platforms, like the J10 and the Air 15 missile, have been able to take down India’s Rafale aircraft.
Their claim is that they brought down five Indian aircraft – three Rafale planes, one Sukhoi and one MiG29 – on the first night of conflict. The Indian side has not denied this claim but it has not confirmed the claim and no Indian media house has reported it.
But all the global media houses, including CNN, BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde – everybody has reported and confirmed, using satellite imagery and other video images, that India lost two fighter jets that evening – at least two if not more and at least one of them was a Rafale.
This would be the first time in the modern era that a Chinese weapon on a Chinese platform has taken down a high-end Western platform. Chinese weaponry has never been used earlier.
When China fought in the Korean War against the United States in the 1950s, it was using Soviet equipment. It is only in recent years that Chinese equipment has come into play. This is the first time we are seeing Chinese weaponry being used against high-end Western equipment.
A Rafale is a 4.5-generation fighter. Not many had expected that Chinese weaponry and Chinese platforms would be successful against it. Therefore, this Pakistani claim has significance which goes beyond the subcontinent. It has significance for Taiwan. It has significance for defence companies. It has significance for geostrategy. There is huge global interest in how this actually played out and India’s silence is adding to the discomfort around it.
What does this mean for India’s Rafale fleet?
Rafale is a good aircraft. It is a very modern aircraft. Aircraft can come down for various reasons. The air force has to first go and destroy radars and the air defence mechanism before it gets deployed. But if you are using aircraft in a tactical manner for anti-terror operations, you are leaving them vulnerable to being quickly monitored, because you are not taking out the air defence in the first go. That, plus other enabling platforms – from AWACS to electronic warfare equipment – enable this kind of environment.
This is not the 1960s, ’70s or the second world war where you are going to have a dog fight. This is a very electronic environment. Think of it as a video game where somebody is seeing everything and all the engagement and firing that happens is beyond visual range.
In this case, it’s not just the aircraft or the pilot. There is the whole enabling environment which has to be there. There could be weaknesses in operational deployment, there could be other weaknesses. It necessarily does not mean that there is a problem with Rafale aircraft.
Moreover, we still have to get confirmation from the Indian side that they lost some Rafale aircraft – one or two or whatever the reality is – before we can actually discuss and debate this in any great detail.
You had written that Balakot was a political success. Do you think that something similar will happen with this ceasefire or do you see it going alright with the BJP?
My own sense at this point is that it is too early to tell.
Initially, what seems to me is that there is huge discomfort in the right-wing ecosystem of the BJP about how things have played out. Unlike 2019, even amongst the media or journalists or analysts, there has not been unanimity about what has gone on. There have been more disturbing questions that have emerged this time about the political leadership, their decision-making, their deployment of the military.
The fact that at least two retired army chiefs – General Ved Malik and General MM Naravane – have expressed their disappointment publicly about this ceasefire shows that even in this very nationalist military constituency of retired veterans, there are questions being asked about what Modi has done and particularly Trump’s public antics and the way Pakistanis have responded to it. It’s not a very pleasant scenario and it is not as one-sided as it seemed in 2019 to me.
We saw the role of “Godi” media in the last three days. What does it mean to have such a media for India’s military and strategic aims as well India’s international image.
If you take out some of the independent platforms, the rest of the media, including some of India’s most reputed newspapers, have been shameful in their coverage. Either they are lying or they don’t show or give context. Particularly television journalists and television editors, their reportage and conduct on social media has been absolutely pathetic, for want of a better word.
What it means strategically is firstly they mislead the country. Secondly, they create hype and pressure, which can compel the government to either tell lies or cover up things or do things it may not be wanting to do, but because it feels under pressure that it has to demonstrate boldness and aggressiveness and the 56-inches kind of a behaviour.
The third thing is that they completely destroy the credibility of whatever is being put out by the Indian side.
It makes me extremely sad that for the first time I am witnessing something amongst neutral observers where they are willing to consider Pakistani media and reports as having greater credibility than what Indian television media and electronic and so-called journalists are putting out. That is really sad and shameful.
In 1999, it was India’s media which helped India win the war. A very senior Pakistani official at that time told me that the reason [General Pervez] Musharraf, when he took power after the military coup post-Kargil, started private television channels in Pakistan was because of the experience of Kargil.
He believed Indian television channels, post-Kargil, were a battle-winning factor and therefore he created independent channels in Pakistan – not out of a love for democracy or freedom of speech. He thought they were strategic tools.
That strategic tool which India used beautifully in 1999 has been completely destroyed. It has become poisonous, it has become venomous and it has become detrimental to India's national interest.
We were not winning the narrative war this time, which we could have easily, considering that Pakistan has a very poor reputation and doesn’t carry much global standing in any case.
